


A Sympathetic Beetle

by Edwardina



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-21
Updated: 2012-05-21
Packaged: 2017-11-20 02:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/580284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edwardina/pseuds/Edwardina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bugs coda. Sam relates to Matt; Matt wishes Sam would relate even more than he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sympathetic Beetle

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "The Ugly Bug Ball" by Burl Ives. For Ilse, whose Sam/Matt shipping made watching Bugs the most fun ever.

Matt was attentive.

That's what people said about him. His mom, his teachers. His progress reports in elementary school. _Matt is very attentive in class... Matt's work shows that he is an attentive and thoughtful student... Though Matt prefers to play by himself, he is keenly observant and a joy to teach..._ His science teachers in particular always said the best stuff about him, but his dad just seemed to hear the other stuff.

"Maybe kids would want to play with you if you didn't spend all your time collecting worms," he told Matt.

"I'm not collecting them," Matt had said. "I'm counting them. I found twenty-seven. They love the rain."

"They come out of the ground so they don't drown in the mud," his dad said.

"No, they really like it when it's muddy and wet --"

"Matt. My point is, you shouldn't stop for every little worm you see. You shouldn't be picking them up and carrying them around at school. Just leave them alone, buddy. Kids are trying to play soccer and you're out on their field worrying about bugs! Why don't you try and play a little soccer, huh?"

"If they're on wet sidewalks, someone will step on them," Matt argued. "Then the sun will come out and they'll get all roasted!"

His dad gave up, then, and looked to his mom. "Honey. You try."

"I think it's all right if Matt wants to help a worm get back to the dirt," said Matt's mom. "As long as you don't bother other kids and you wash your hands when you come in from recess."

"I wash my hands," Matt had muttered peevishly. He didn't really think there was anything grosser about picking up worms than touching lockers, door handles, and cafeteria food.

Matt's mom was more understanding, though. When he was nine, she got him an ant farm for Christmas, one of those kinds that was framed in green plastic and that had a hokey barn molded into it. Matt watched them dig tunnels for hours, reading the booklet that had come with the farm and learning that ants were sensitive to smells and that there were thousands of different species of them out there. Thousands. That blew his mind. He checked out books on bugs from the school library, plus the one a few blocks from his house. He asked for a praying mantis for his birthday and got to pick one out himself.

So he was kind of a geek. But he wasn't some oblivious little kid. He saw the way his mantis creeped his mom out if she looked at it too long, and he could tell his dad wished he didn't like his so-called pets so much. The guy tried to get him to play soccer, join baseball, check out Boy Scouts, get into collecting rocks or looking at things under a microscope or through a telescope into outer space. Just about anything else was an improvement. He even bought Matt a leopard gecko one summer, with a terrarium and rocks and everything, trying to upgrade him into lizard territory. It was really cool, but Thin Lizzy ate crickets, which Matt collected himself if he could. When she kicked the bucket, Matt asked for a tarantula to fill the empty terrarium.

Throughout all that, Matt changed schools eight times. He lived in four different states in as many years as his dad's work relocated them over and over. His dad would spend months developing land and building houses, neighborhoods, strip malls, whatever. They settled somewhere just long enough for Matt to learn his way around and conclude that Missouri was Wheel Bug Central or whatever, then his dad would be re-assigned or finish a development and his mom would bother him to start packing.

He didn't really ever play with other kids.

Because he moved all the time, he groused to himself; he was always the new kid. And he liked school. He liked homework. He liked being put into the special programs at school. They may have segregated him from the kids who didn't know how to spell or do long division and put him in a smaller pool of kids who wore big glasses and were reading at high school grade levels and didn't necessarily have any more social skills than him, but that was fine by him. He didn't care that he was a geek. He didn't care about what sports the other kids were playing or what TV shows they were watching. He didn't mind wearing glasses. In elementary school, guys called him four eyes, bug eyes. Matt never minded. _You should see how many eyes spiders have_ , he wanted to say.

But in middle school, they upgraded to "fag."

They didn't know his name sometimes. They just casually called him "that fag who has a poster of a spider in his locker," or "don't pick that fag, dude. He can't even play."

"You know, girls are gonna run away screaming if you mention Tillie," his dad told him one day.

Matt's tarantula's name was not Tillie. She didn't have a name, but his parents called her Tillie like she was some barky little dog so they wouldn't have to say "your tarantula." Matt preferred not to name the insects he was rooming with. He was pretty sure they didn't name him. His ants weren't congregating and calling him "that fag." They just co-existed together, and Matt liked it that way. It was comforting to lie in the dark in his room with the bug light on -- the dim red bulb that comfortably lit his terrarium, ant farms, plastic cases housing stick bugs and beetles and even the occasional firefly, and cast their shadows gently upon the wall behind them. It made him feel like he was part of the ecosystem of the world and not just the awkward new kid all the time.

"I don't want to talk to girls about Tillie," Matt replied, irritated.

 _Actually, Dad_ , he continued on silently, _I don't really want to talk to girls. Bet you don't know that. Bet no one in your life's ever told you you're attentive._

The summer before he started high school, he got contacts.

Just because he didn't really care about girls and he pretty much preferred nature to people, it didn't mean he didn't want to talk to anyone, ever. Again, he wasn't ignorant. He wasn't stupid. He was just different. In a way, he'd always known it. Always. Maybe since before the ant farm that had taken over his understanding of the world and re-worked it into subterranean tunnels where there was always something else going on, not visible from the surface. He'd felt it when his second grade teacher, Mr. Barnes, a young guy with a leather wristwatch that Matt could remember detail for detail for years to come, had written down the words, _Matt is a joy to teach_. He'd felt it when he'd gotten paired up with the kid who sat next to him in gym class and spotted his sit-ups every day. He felt it in the air like humidity, all around him, sweltering, somehow all over his skin and inside his lungs, but otherwise untouchable, distant, intangible.

Still, even though Matt noticed stuff, paid attention, kept his eyes open and his ear to the ground and took in his surroundings -- he never really saw anything that bothered him until he saw this tall guy.

This tall guy picked up Tillie.

There was Lynda, doing that super-nice, super-polite thing his parents just ate up, and Tillie was ambling toward her, right on course, and then there was the guy. The tall guy effortlessly moved Lynda away and came right up to the Tillie, unafraid, and scooped her up with a light touch.

In the tall guy's hand, Tillie was calm and small; he handled her like she was a kitten or a baby, harmless, and handed her back to Matt -- and Matt kind of snapped to attention all at once.

The tall guy's name was Sam.

And "tall" was putting it mildly. Sam towered. He was lanky like a daddy longlegs, limbs for miles, but somehow he wasn't awkward, and his hands were weirdly beautiful in their stable capability, palms large, fingers thin and lengthy.

This just totally figured. It would be someone his dad was trying to impress with all that suburban perfection cookie-cutter stuff, like everyone could be bought with smiles and balloons and barbecue. Of course Sam just had to be looking to buy a house here, when all the bugs were busy acting weird and Matt still had to unpack his room and change his messed up schedule and do a bunch of other New Kid In Town stuff. And of course Sam and that brother (or whatever) of his had to be the first people in recent memory who had actually tried to talk to him about bugs. Matt didn't know whether the stomach-twisty, out-of-body feeling he got from it all was because he could smell Sam out there in the damp woods, walking close behind him, or because the stick bug Matt had picked up and Sam's brother were casual party to the way he could feel himself sweating, and Sam wasn't urging him to put the bug down or lock it away in the plastic carrier.

"Hang in there, Matt," Sam said, after they'd emerged from the woods near the roadside. He reached out and gripped Matt by the shoulder in a bracing kind of way. "Look, I know you don't know me. You might not want to hear me out. But it gets better."

"In college?" Matt asked, impatient.

Sam glanced at his brother, who rolled his eyes and started off toward his ancient-looking car, leaving Sam and Matt at the mouth of the wood.

"In college," Sam repeated. "Nobody will be telling you what to do, how to spend your time, how to feel. If you want, you can major in entomology. Study bugs all you want, twenty-four seven."

"And get drunk and hook up with all those slutty girls studying bugs with me?" Matt asked dryly. He wasn't sure why he was talking to Sam like this; Sam clearly didn't mind if he did want to study fruit flies all day, every day, forever and ever, amen, and that was really cool. He wasn't sure why Sam was talking to him like this, either, though.

"If you want, sure, I guess," Sam had laughed. "You don't seem the type, but that's the great thing about college. You can find out if you want to do stuff like that or not. You can find out who you are as a person, away from your family."

"Well, I've known who I am as a person since forever: a freak and a disappointment."

Sam squinted at him, then smiled. "You're not, though. You're not a freak or a disappointment. Believe me."

"Why should I?"

"I just know. Trust me. I've met freakier. And hell, I'm not exactly normal, myself."

Matt just stared uncertainly for a minute, feeling like Sam was trying to tell him they were in the same boat but not quite believing it, until Sam fished into the pocket of his jacket and said, "Hey. I'm going to give you my number, okay?"

"Okay," Matt said quickly. "Uh -- why?"

Sam produced a folded-up piece of paper and a pen and began to scrawl on it. "Because... if you notice any changes with the bugs -- they start acting different, they start heading in some particular direction -- or if you find any more holes like the one you just showed us, me and Dean, we want to know. You'd be helping us out a lot. Plus, if you need help with anything, you can call me." He handed the paper with his digits to Matt -- who must have looked as confused as he felt, because Sam added, "Seriously. Anytime."

"Uhh, Sam," Matt began, "I'm, uh... I'm sixteen."

After a pause, Sam said brightly, "I know. You said."

Matt slowly tucked the number into his pocket. A number. He'd gotten a guy's number. A guy who wanted him to call and tell him about bugs. So, Oklahoma -- weird bug activity and also a real hive of Baptists, but... definitely the best state he'd lived in so far.

"All right," said Sam, looking pleased. "I better go before my brother starts honking the horn. Take care, Matt."

Less than twenty-four hours later, Matt had yet to actually take Sam's number out of his pocket again.

He'd thrust his hand into his pocket multiple times on the walk home from the woods to feel the folded-up paper in there, getting a weird warm shiver every time he did. He'd felt it while checking up on his room. His tarantula was acting like she wanted to climb the terrarium walls. The ants had piled up on the surface of their farm as if trying to form a giant ladder of themselves and make it out of the plastic somehow. He thought about calling Sam, but his insects had been acting weird for days now. Finally, he'd fingered the paper at the fold as he tromped downstairs, where he found roaches erupting from the earth in his backyard. He had gripped at it like crazy when he headed in to find his mom trying to swat at several crawling around in the kitchen.

Sam had called him, then, and in the most cruel twist of fate ever, had wound up in Matt's house when the bugs attacked. Great. Just great. The first guy Matt had ever had a full, actual, self-acknowledged crush on and insects were attacking him and he was crouched with Matt's dad in the corner of the attic. A stellar first date.

He was throwing a bunch of his stuff away when Sam found him again, striding over to him all tall and charming and triumphant. Even with bee stings on his neck, he was probably the most attractive guy Matt had ever seen. It was his hands, Matt realized distantly, and his smile, and the way he stood. Not that his face was bad. It was just his demeanor, like something about him was open and caring. It was the way he'd fearlessly and respectfully gathered Matt's tarantula, which most people were scared of, and how Tillie had sat in his palm contentedly.

"What's this?" Sam asked almost merrily.

"I don't know," Matt said, feeling shy in the morning light. "They kind of weird me out now."

Sam just laughed. "Yeah, I should hope so! Maybe you won't study bugs twenty-four seven after all, huh?"

"Yeah, maybe not. Maybe Native American folklore is where the action is," Matt joked, awkwardly trying to shove the plastic carcass of his emptied ant farm into the trash bin. The whole thing was ludicrously full of bug junk: preserved specimens in all kinds of glass and plastic casings, carriers for his expeditions into nature, books and DVDs, even bug t-shirts from his nerdier days. He'd filled it and he still had a bunch more to cram in. Snagging the plastic handle, he turned and dragged the heavy bin back towards its place next to the house. It got lighter abruptly; Sam had taken the other handle.

"You'll do great," Sam said with a grunt. "You're smart. Whatever you wanna do... it'll work out for you. For what it's worth, maybe I was a little hard on your dad. Telling you to get out of your house and everything, that's my issue, not yours. When I saw your dad coming down on you about your spider, I just really related, you know? You are who you are and sometimes that's not who your parents want you to be, and I thought what you needed was what I needed. So I'm sorry about that. It seems like maybe your dad isn't that bad."

"He's not that bad," Matt agreed, glancing towards his dad, who was talking to Dean exhaustedly by the side of the road, arms crossed. He realized vaguely that Dean was waiting on Sam, and considering the bug disaster, there was definitely no way Sam was ever going to stick around this neck of the woods. Even Matt's parents were getting on with the process of relocating, in the early stages of purging and packing and talking about where they were going next. "He still doesn't know the real me, but without all these bugs in the system..." His joke fell totally flat. Something was itching in him. "You're not gay, are you."

"Uh, no," said Sam, though he didn't seem surprised or offended. "Dean's my brother."

"I know. No offense. I just... kinda hoped."

"Oh!" Sam let out, and straightened up. He was tall, so tall Matt could hear his dad's voice in his head talking about how he should give basketball a try. "Well -- that's flattering."

"I should've known. I mean, I guess I did know. So I shouldn't have bothered to hope, right?"

"Uh, well..."

Sam actually took a step back and glanced around the corner, and Matt pessimistically surmised he was eying an escape route. He slammed the plastic lid onto the bin full of a bunch of his life, no big deal or anything, and when he turned around again Sam took him by the shoulder.

"College," Sam said again, looking right in his eyes, serious and steady.

"Okay... college," Matt repeated, blinking.

And maybe he should've seen it coming, attentive and thoughtful and observant as he was, but Matt had never exactly had a lot of friends, let alone someone who was more than a friend -- so he didn't. Sam had taken his face into one slightly sweaty palm before he realized what was happening and tipped it up. For a moment their mouths just touched gently, like his mom might've tenderly pressed a smooch to his forehead when he was sick and she felt sorry for him.

Somewhere around the corner of the house, Dean and his dad were talking. Somewhere inside, his mom was on the phone and packing at the same time. There were holes in their roof and walls and windows were broken and it was all dewy and innocent outside, just some ordinary March morning, wet enough that the worms were probably happy in the earth below. But here, on the surface, around the side of the house, this tall guy with gentle hands was kissing him.

It passed in the space of a few heartbeats.

"It gets better," Sam whispered, warm breath against Matt's lips, and kissed him again. 

" _This_ does?" Matt managed.

"Yeah, actually. Yeah. Much better..."

This time Matt pressed in, catching the zipper of Sam's jacket in awkward fingers as he kissed Sam, soaking in everything desperately. Sam's chin was slightly rough and Matt could smell the coffee his mom had made just from kissing him, smell mired sweat and cologne and the canvas of Sam's jacket. It was weird that he could taste another person like this. It was even weirder that he liked that he could.

After too short a minute, Sam pulled back suddenly, leaving Matt in a futile sway.

"Oh, God, I have to go," he laughed thickly.

"I know. Before your brother honks the horn and my dad sees me kissing a college guy," Matt panted.

Sam smiled, and for the first time, something about it was awkward and closed-off instead of inciting Matt to smile back.

"Right." He backed off, shaking his head and then reaching up to scratch it nervously. "Well, uh. You have my number, so, uh..."

"Want me to lose it?" Matt asked, tapping a futile fist against the lid on the garbage can.

"No," said Sam. "Keep it."


End file.
